


Something Deep and Dark

by laissemoidanser



Category: True Detective
Genre: Alternative Perspective, Headcanon, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-12
Updated: 2014-11-12
Packaged: 2018-02-25 03:56:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2607584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laissemoidanser/pseuds/laissemoidanser
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A time span from early 1995 to 2014.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something Deep and Dark

“Where is your Tax Man, Marty? Records room again?” Geraci chuckles. “Told you, that asshole got a thing for dead girls pictures.”

 Nothing has changed at the police station somewhere in Louisiana. Stuffy space is filled with coarse laughter. Everyone reacts to Steve Geraci’s dirty jokes. Except for Marty who only shakes his head. His new partner is a strange fellow, no doubt about that, but for some reason he’s developed a kind of sympathy for him, unlike the others. All they need is a reason to laugh at him.

 “Haven’t seen him since morning,” Marty says. He frowns and skews at Geraci and the company.

 “You better keep him on a leash, Marty. We don’t want no trouble here,” Geraci just wouldn’t give it a break.

 “Shut the fuck up, Steve. Or I’m gonna be _your_ fucking double-trouble,” Marty looks at a cup of coffee, the one he brought Rust this morning, now so hopelessly cold. His partner has been acting strange lately. Of course, he is used to eccentric partners, especially since Marty’s principles don’t particularly include giving a damn about their problems. But things just went differently with Rust. Son of a bitch. Such a waste of good coffee.

 In the evening, when everyone else has scattered in all the directions possible: home, beer, girlfriends… Marty throws his jacket over his shoulder lazily and is heading for the door. The usual awareness of his wife and the girls waiting for him at home comes to his mind. And, as usual, the thought bounces off the walls of his consciousness, arousing just a warm glimpse of light in the bottom of his heart. Everything is as it should be. Probably. Marty stops halfway and looks thoughtfully at the door with a plate that reads _"Records Office"._

"Son of a bitch," he mutters, looking back at the empty office. He sighs and pulls the heavy iron handle.

 Marty walks past the endless rows of files and boxes, looking about curiously. He doesn’t go here often. And he certainly wouldn’t drag himself into this dim hell of a maze because of Rust, but Steve and his friends outdid themselves today. And he feels as responsible as ever for the new guy who he had kindly agreed to take under his wing. In the end, they still got the unsolved murder case hanging like a noose around their necks.

The secretary gives Marty the keys wearily and hurries home, asking to close the door on the way back. Marty walks past the evidence room and gets to the very heart of “the maze”- he finds Rust there. A lean flexible figure, bent over a mosaic of photos. Light from the desk lamp fills the corridor of files with mystery.

 “Hey, Rust,” he calls his partner.

 “Marty,” Rust responds, a tired carelessness in his accent shortens consonants "r" and "t", so that they merge and border on the line of something in-between. Marty likes the sound of his name on Rust’s lips and he can’t help smiling.

 “It's late. You want me to drop you home?”

Rust straightens up to his full height, facing Marty, leans against the table. His eyes are burning feverishly in the dim light, and Marty conjectures that today the answer most likely will be "No". A strand of hair is playfully curling above his partner’s forehead. A conflicting combination with a pensive heavy gaze and a tight line of lips.

“I think I’ll stay on a little more,” he says.

 “Suit yourself,” Marty says, approaching the table and putting a new cup of coffee next to the pictures. “Brought this for you. Cheer up a little.

 A mosaic of dead bodies on the photos draws Marty’s attention.

 “Holly shit. What’s that you’ve got here?” he asks. Rust turns around, so that they both are now looking at the pictures. For some reason personal space mattered too little for them from the very beginning. More precisely, for Rust, and for some reason, Marty did not mind. Now, when half of Rust’s body, literally, bumps into his back, he doesn’t even flinch. The photos disgust him. “Rust, you’re a crazy pervert, you know that?”

 “You’ll change your mind when I tell you what I find out today.”

 “Surprise me, baby,” Marty grins and suddenly it’s too hot, Rust’s body heat echoes in his own with burning desire to escape, to find freedom. To escape with Rust, out of here and away from the stifling social cell. For some reason, only Rust can offer him wings. Right here, right now, right over these horrible pictures. Marty throws his jacket on the table and puts his hand on Rust’s hot lithe back. He guides his palm down and feels the body shivering under it.

 “What are you doing, Marty?” Rust asks, but his tone is indifferent. There’s no awareness, no curiosity there, just an even question. The sound of his own name in Rust’s voice sends hot impulses straight down his dick. A feeling so familiar so pleasantly agonizing, that Marty had long forgotten, now flushes with unprecedented force and begins to shine with new colors. _What are you doing_? Is spinning in Marty’s head when he bends Rust over the table, unbuttons his shirt, unfastens his belt, pulls down his pants. Pulls down Rust’s pants. _What are you doing?_ gradually dissolves into his own breath and the pounding of his pulse in his head, and then he hears Rust underneath, and – can it be - his moaning. A wave of wild pleasure washes over him, and he doesn’t want to hear anything but this sweet sound.

The ability to think sense returns to him later, when he storms out of the records room, slams the door of his car and heads home – to his family. But his pulse still humming hotly and his memory is filled with a deep sound of _"Marty"_ on Rust’s lips,and himself breathing  out _"Rust",_ sharp as a piece of paper.

"Why are you late, Marty? Tell me what happened, Marty. We’ve been waiting for you to have dinner with us. " Maggie just wouldn’t give him a break. The girls are already asleep and, of course, she is angry that Marty is so late home again. Marty tries to explain that he had a rough day (which is partly true), that time’s running out, and they work ragged, to somehow get ground in this investigation. The latter was utter rubbish. It seems, no one except Rust was all that hot to solve some obscure  occult murder, no one gave a shit, the top brass would gladly put this case under wraps and stuck it somewhere deep in the records room. This fucking room...Marty nervously adjusts the belt on his pants while trying to convince Maggie that soon he will have more free time, and he certainly will spend it here, with his family. He thinks he sounds quite convincing, because he himself starts to believe in what he’s saying. In bed, he turns his back to Maggie carefully, says he’s dead tired. In his thoughts he was already back to the records room, to the cosy light of a desk lamp, the rustling of paper on the table, Rust’s voice, hot intimacy of their bodies and to what now will become their secret. Marty bites the tip of the blanket and plunges into completely new warm feeling that seems to have awakened after a long sleep and now flutters under his heart like the wings of many butterflies.  
  
They don’t speak about it. Next morning Marty finds Rust at his desk, smoking a cigarette as if nothing has happened and waiting for his cup of coffee. Marty remembers – he puts it on the table next to Rust’s ledger.  
  
“Hey, Rust,”  he says.  
  
“Marty,” Rust responds evenly, and so the day goes by. Days, weeks go by, till the records room memory starts to take shape of some insane narcotic dream -side effect of caffeine, nicotine or alcohol. If only his eyes weren’t particularly glued to Rust’s body, if Rust’s eyes didn’t seem so piercing and full of meaning, Marty would prefer to leave the incident in his memories.  
  
They’re driving to the south of Louisiana, following another thread in the investigation. This thread led them back on a lonely endless road charged with hot air and surrounded by endless green of the hills. Rust is looking out the window pensively, Marty is drilling holes in traffic lane with his gaze. Soon, a black stripe of a river crawls out on their right winding like a snake, following them, overgrowing with trees and shrubs.  
  
“This place tastes interesting,” Rust reflects. “As if man has never set foot in here. Long forgotten by civilization and detached from the rest of the world.”  
  
Marty only sighs in response. He’s been getting used to these outbursts of philosophical musings, at this point they don’t startle him anymore and he’s gave up trying to challenge Rust - but still, against his will, he listens and makes mental notes of them.  
  
The road ahead finally ends with junction and somehow it makes Marty painfully sad. This junction means the end of solitude and a blissful detachment he suddenly started to appreciate.  
  
“Which way?” Marty asks, gripping the steering wheel.  
  
“Right, I believe,” Rust responds thoughtfully, tapping his fingers on his old ledger.  
  
Marty takes the right turn - a huge old tree straight ahead. Marty pulls off the road and stops the car in the shade of the endless canopy. Rust, that son of a bitch, as if he knows why they stopped, keeps stubbornly silent, lowers his eyes, opens the ledger and pretends to read the latest note for the hundredth time.  
  
“Rust, I can’t...leave it... ,” Marty says, shaking his head.  
  
“What are you on about, Marty?” Rust asks.  
  
“You know damn well what. Fuck, Rust, why you acting like nothing happened, why...won’t you  explain to me?”  
  
“What do I have to explain to you?” Rust closes his ledger with a snap, looks somewhere ahead now. “Not my fault you wanted some right there and then.”  
  
“Christ! You could stop me, you know, could say a single fucking word,” Marty says. Rust, he knows absolutely everything, so why can’t he tell Marty, now, what really happened and why? Say anything that will calm Marty down, bring his life back to normal?

But Rust keeps silent, only turns his eyes, blue like an abyss, slowly, to Marty. He is powerless to explain, because he is suffering just the same. Except he would not show it, because the consequences of the surrounding world’s chain reaction may be too irreparable for him. And he can only let Marty realize that he doesn’t know either.

 Marty’s heart aches, he puts his hand on the back of Rust’s neck, pulls him close and kisses. Weird kiss - like two drowning men who’ve found the last consolation in each other, dragging each other further down. And suddenly this kiss is so good and so right. Marty slips his fingers in Rust’s wavy hair, gently deepens the kiss, but does not lose himself in it, on the contrary, he tries to grasp every second of it. Now he is fully present in this moment of time and Rust seems to him like an unexplored treasure. He breaks the kiss for a breath, his head spinning. Rust stares at his lips and responds eagerly when they kiss again, this time properly. Rust’s ledger slips to the floor when he reaches for the belt of Marty’s pants, Marty unzips Rust’s fly and the world around them fades, only the rustling of leaves over the car and the noise of their own panting.

“Fuck...” Marty moans, face buried in the crook of Rust’s neck.  
  
“Napkins in the backseat,” Rust says quietly, then reaches back himself to retrieve a stack of paper napkins they took away from some diner today. Rust cleans Marty and himself up, kisses Marty one more time, and they sit in silence for a while, coming back to senses. The road keeps stretching towards the horizon, and Marty returns home even later than usual. That day he was parting with Rust for too long, fighting the urge to spend the night at his place, to make up some pretend excuse for Maggie. Just once.

 Time passes, flies by like a sweeping flash of street lights and stretches as endlessly as roads of Louisiana. Maggie begins to suspect that Marty got into an affair on the side. Damn woman’s wit. She worries, calls Rust secretly, as she thinks, only to ask him to watch after his partner and share if he notices something. Rust promises her that it will be alright, taking a drag on a cigarette over the phone - Marty sleeps next to him on the bed, exhausted. Through the haze of fatigue, he suspects still that it’s his wife calling and makes weak attempts to say something to Rust. But the other manages fine enough on his own. He hangs up, leans back against the pillows and exhales cigarette smoke at the ceiling. The blanket partly slid off his naked body - mostly because Marty selfishly pulled it to his side. Marty puts his arm on Rust’s chest, runs his fingers over his neck. "What did she say?" He mutters. 

“Told me to look after your ass,” Rust answers. “In case you’re hooking up with some bimbo.”  
  
“Yeah,” Marty says with a smile. “You are doing your job just fine, Rust.”  
  
“Yeah, who would have thought you’re more invested in my ass.”  
  
“I’d punch you, you know, if I had the energy right now,” Marty mumbles. Rust keeps smoking his cigarette, impassive.  
  
Marty sits up abruptly in the half-dark.  
  
“This is wrong, Rust,” he says. “You know that’s wrong, right? “  
  
“No idea what you talkin’ about, Marty.”  
  
“You have all the ideas, you son of a bitch. We need to stop it. What people  gonna think? Back at the station they give us looks already...you know, like they suspect something.”  
  
Rust freezes on his half of the bed like a statue. Eternity passes before he exhales. Marty expects an answer from him, gush of anger, maybe. Anything to  help explain what is happening between them. But hears only a dry:  
  
“Suit yourself, Marty. I don’t give a fuck.”  
  
Marty gets dressed, takes his jacket and leaves. “I suppose I don’t give none as well,” he thinks. But his heart is heavy in his chest, crushing his ribs. He is back home, he doesn’t care that he reeks of sex, cigarette smoke and alcohol. Maggie gives him hell, convinced that Marty is the last bastard on earth, and that he forgot completely what a family means. Marty didn’t forget, Marty knows that he loves his family. It’s just that now, all he wants is to sit in a chair and drink himself insensible. He made a mistake somewhere along the way, got confused, but can’t figure out where exactly.  
  
Time flies farther and the investigation brings results. They are on to Reginald Ledoux, and Rust begins his transformation into Crash. Marty never seen him like that before - like the second self, long forgotten, now breaking free with such fervent determination. An opportunity to be someone else, to leave the granite walls of dusty Rustin Cohle and spread the wings with growing fixes of cocaine. Rust flaunts before him in his leather jacket, even lets him try it on, gives him a taste of the old stashed cognac, gives him a taste of himself, Crash, light as a feather, crazy, burning with poisonous flame of life. If Rust can burn, it’s only one way - by killing himself from inside. And that fire catches Marty again - he drinks the cognac up, tells Crash to undress, to leave only the jacket on. Crash obeys, falls to his knees before him, on the mattress, and all the promises are postponed again.  
  
They drive on a mission to get Reggie Ledoux. Maggie leaves Marty. And they shoot Reggie in the head, later lying to everyone how Marty had no choice but to do so. They become heroes, praised by everyone in the department and in the newspapers. But Marty loses something, as if he has no backbone, no anchor; he is vulnerable under tripled scrutiny of people around him. Rust doesn’t care, but he feels Marty’s concern. Marty misses his girls and he begs Maggie to come back. Eventually she does, thinking she’s disciplined him enough.

 “I wish I could stay," he tells Rust in the car one evening. It is so easy to just go after him in the house that has already become their sacred place, the only witness of their tragedy. Marty kisses Rust. Says again, how he doesn’t want to leave, runs his fingers along the sharpness of his partner’s cheekbones. So dear to him.

 "Guess it's not my problem," Rust says and gets out of the car. Marty watches him until he goes inside and the light is switched on in the windows. Then he sighs, looks down and shakes his head.

Years pass by. Rust is also looking for an anchor, because Marty does not want to let go of his. Maggie helps him find it. That’s how Laurie appears in his life. Sitting in a fancy restaurant at family dinner, Marty and Rust look at each other across the table, smile and pretend they are happy in their little perfect world. Everything is right where it should be now after all and their lives are just like everybody else’s. “See,” says Rust’s smile “Just the way you wanted it. The _right_ way. You happy now?” Marty smiles back at him and feels emptiness in his heart - not even a warm glimpse of light there. “Laurie,” he thinks. “Of course, I am happy, Rust, I'm happy for you, now that we both fit so perfectly into the world around us. And for some time, they manage to convince themselves of this.  
  
But soon Rust loses the sense of the charade - he wanted something, wanted some kind of proof for himself. For Marty. That he’s simply unable to live a life like that. He looks for a moment at the clipping from a framed newspaper front page on the wall that reads _"Hero Detectives"_ , him and Marty carrying two children in their arms.  
  
“I don’t want to have children with anybody, ever,” he tells Laurie. And she takes the blame, gets hurt, leaves him. Things he said to her, he didn’t mean it to happen this way, but he needed a reason to end this role he tried to play for Laurie and Maggie and Marty, the role he is no longer fit in. His soul is far too old, too bottomless to squeeze into the frame of simple domestic bliss. 

And he is completely alone. His curly bang goes off - without the unruly strands of light-brown Rustin Cohle is like a wanderer escaped from under the unforgiving razor of time. Nothing to soften his sharp features. He’s become wild, resilient, dangerous even, brooding and unpredictable, like a predator, ready to destroy anyone who gets in his way. 

His relations with Marty have become more abrasive. The two of them keep quarreling over nothing, ripping up old painful wounds.

"Without me, you're nothing, buddy,"  Rust tells Marty, looking at him disdainfully, face inches away from Marty’s – as if he tries to dissect his partner and look at him under the microscope, to watch the effect of his hurtful words reach every cell of his body. Sure, Marty has so many things to worry about now– he’s got his family, the need to maintain his “married guy” status for the society of jerks, not unlike himself. But that’s not it Rust wants to see. Rust looks at him and hopes to see that this is _not_ true. That there is still something left in Marty to distinguish him from them. Something that made him bring Rust coffee and lunch in the past – true kindness from his heart. Hope that it is not yet buried under the layers of self-importance and selfishness, because now, under Rust’s gaze, Marty’s pretense fails and he begins to melt, his eyes watering. Rust smirks at this discovery, turns and walks away, feeling those blue eyes on his back, eyes full of regret Marty hardly aware of. 

  
“Nothing can stop me from being happy with Maggie,” Marty thinks on his way to the market one evening. He does all the necessary purchases, and then, on the way back to the parking lot, spots a bar.

 "Fuck it," he whispers to himself and realizes that today he can’t find a reason to pass it by. Just one bottle, he thinks. But by miraculous coincidence of fate, which must have a good sense of humor, at the bar Marty meets a girl he met many years ago, back in the days when he and Rust were desperately powerless against each other. The feeling of nostalgia for those days overwhelms him, and he can’t resist –next thing, he is in bed with this girl, making another mistake . Turns out this time it won’t go away with him. The girl isn’t the one she seems to be - he thought he pulled her out of the abyss, saved her back then, years ago but the darkness has already swallowed her soul. She won’t leave him be, leads him on, sends her photos, keeps calling him and of course one day Maggie learns about her.

 Maggie, is tired too, tired of all this. She thinks that since the year 1995 Marty has been taking a low road, ceased to be the man she loved. She is convinced that he was unfaithful to her more than once, but this one will be the last straw. In despair, she goes to a bar, gets involved with the first man she sees there, but can not bring herself to go to bed with him. Then another idea comes to her, a cruel one. She comes to Rust. Somehow, she feels that if she wants to make Marty hurt, if she wants to let him know how much he hurt her, it’s the best place to go. 

At his doorstep fear grips her, she almost turns back feeling that she is crossing the border, which should never be crossed, that she’s destroying something special. But she’s already knocking at his door. Rust takes time to open it; he is drunk and is hardly aware of what is happening. He is suspended from work, and now has no choice but to get drunk at home. Still he won’t leave the case alone. The case where it all started. His consciousness grasps Maggie - color of her dress makes him smell roses and sharp thorns of despair. He doesn’t invite her in, but she comes anyway, puts a bottle of wine down on the table and whines to him about Marty. “Marty,” Rust thinks. And it pains him, the fact that he’s left all alone here. He blames Marty for everything, is angry with him, and suddenly that’s Marty at his house, stands in front of him and says he’s sorry, moves closer to Rust and reaches out. 

“What are you doin’?”  Rust asks, he vaguely remembers that Maggie came to him tonight, doesn’t want her to see this, the roses keep smearing his sight but he blinks them away, wants to see Marty instead. And now he kisses back, caught under the veil of desire. He fucks Maggie right there at the kitchen counter, thinking how he would fuck Marty now, thinking it _is_ Marty in front of him. 

When he steps back, his mind clears up and he sees Maggie, hastily buttoning her dress up. His stomach turns. He stares at her, at her dress, at his unbuttoned pants and then he gets it.

 "This will definitely hurt him. I'm sorry, Rust, but thank you. This will work," Maggie says again and again.

 "Get the fuck out of here," Rust opens the door and tells her to leave, then he yells at her, could have killed, if she stayed a second longer. He slams the door shut and stares at the counter with fear in his eyes, the fear that now he has lost everything. 

That evening, Maggie tells Marty. Says she has never been fucked like that before. Marty grips her by the throat.

 "Coward," she throws in his face. Silly girl, does not realize that his heart is broken, that it’s not only pain there but resentment and jealousy. He is like a wounded animal, and Maggie can’t even begin to imagine what she'd done. Next morning Marty comes to office, but he can’t bring himself to work, he sits with his face buried in his hands. Suddenly Rust comes - to pick up the files. Fucking son of a bitch! Marty spawns with anger, he takes off his jacket, gun, badge, tie, hurries to meet him and knocks him off his feet. That day, he would’ve killed Rust and then would’ve regretted it all his life, but someone pulls them apart, at least five people are trying to constrain Marty and he’s even more furious because Rust, all beaten up, face covered in blood, showed him almost no resistance, as if he fucking came here to get strangled by Marty’s hands. 

"Fuck this. Fuck this world," Rust says in Leroy Salter’s office.  
  
"Great hook, Marty."  
  
Marty doesn’t see him for the next ten years. He knows that Rust somewhere in Alaska, knows that he will never see him again and the burden of existence falls on his shoulders at full extent. He carries it though, in his own way, even thinks that he copes. Tries to lead a healthy lifestyle, to meet someone, to find replacement for Maggie, calls her once, maybe twice a year. But life has already left him behind, all alone. And sometimes in the evening he looks at the empty half of his bed and imagines Rust, with a curl of brown hair over his forehead, exhaling cigarette smoke, his profile defined sharp against dim light of the nightstand. Then his heart is filled with aching pain and Marty realizes that it was it, the best moments he recklessly lost.  
  
But ten years later, in the rearview mirror, he sees a familiar red pickup, its headlight flash blinding him for a moment. He pulls over to the sideline, listens to the footsteps approaching and a new version of Rust leans into his side window. Marty recognizes him only by the bird tattoo on his hand. The stash and long grayish hair in ponytail don’t help much.  
  
“Marty,” his voice has gotten even raspier, but at the familiar sound of his name Marty can’t help but smile, defenseless.  
  
“Rust”.  
  
Fate gives them another chance.  
  
And then decides to take it back in Carcosa, when they finally manage get on a trail of the old 1995 case which messed their lives beyond repair. Marty’s bleeding out, Rust’s fading away in his arms, Marty desperately trying to save him, pressing his handkerchief to a deep rough wound on his stomach.

 "Rust, Rust," he says over and over again, running his hand over the pale face of his dear partner. Rust stops reacting to Marty’s voice soon and Marty looks at the black sky above, cursing the day when Dora Lange was killed. And the sky lights up. 

At the hospital Maggie and the girls come to visit him, he tells Audrey he is fine, knowing full well that it is not the truth, that it even sounds silly now, when his best friend is in coma. He tries to justify his words, tears of fear and realization strangle him. Perhaps, that’s when Maggie knows. The news of Rust’s recovery Marty takes for a miracle. He annoys the nurses till he gets permission to sit in a wheelchair next to his bed. Rust is so weak he doesn’t even acknowledge his presence at first. 

“What are you doing here?” he asks at last. “You watching me sleep?”  
  
"Damn it, Rust, nurse let me in, been here for five minutes. What’s your problem? "  
  
"I don’t know what’s your problem? "  
  
“You,” Marty thinks.“You” thinks Rust. 

“Not a care in the world,” Marty says.And comes to Rust every day, even after he’s dismissed. Soon Rust will be out as well, Marty promises to take care of him. At Marty’s he recovers really quick. Now only scars on their bodies remind of what happened - the consequences of their tragedy, the consequences of what occurred between them way back in 1995. Marty kisses scars on Rust’s body and promises he will never let him go again. He invites him to work at his company - they are called"Hart & Cohle Investigative Solutions." now. Rust shaves off his stash and cuts long hair shorter. Marty asks him not to cut it too short so that a strand of gray hair would curl over his forehead like in the past. Rust is just a battered version of himself at that time, but he is even dearer like that. 

They stop the car on the roadside near a cliff, sit side by side on the hood and look at the scarlet sunset. Rust’s hand covers Marty’s behind their backs. Marty looks him in the eye and finds a familiar abyss in their blue, illuminated with warm colors of sunset. Marty plunges into this abyss and it warms his heart in response.  
  
“I love you,”  he says simply, kissing Rust, pressing his cheek against his. These words are so easy now. Marty wonders why he couldn’t say them earlier. Why it took so many years of pain, blood and breakups to say just these three words. Maybe because they would have turned differently back then, maybe because back then they would not have had so much value and would get lost in a sea of doubt. Now they have nothing to lose.

“Love you too. Very much,” Rust says quietly and their hearts melt together with the setting sun, fingers intertwined. Tragedy with happy ending.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
